The use of bacterial cell-free extracts for in vitro protein synthesis offers several advantages over conventional in vivo protein expression methods. Cell-free systems can direct most, if not all, of the metabolic resources of the cell towards the exclusive production of one protein. Moreover, the lack of a cell wall and membrane components in vitro is advantageous since it allows for control of the synthesis environment. However, the efficiency of cell-free extracts can be decreased by bacterial proteins that inhibit protein synthesis, either directly or indirectly. Thus, inactivation of undesirable proteins that decrease the efficiency of protein synthesis should increase the yield of desirable proteins in cell-free extracts. For example, the inactivation of proteins that decrease the efficiency of protein synthesis should increase the yield of polypeptides having non-native amino acids incorporated at a defined amino acid residue. The introduction of non-native amino acids (nnAA) into polypeptides is useful for increasing the biological diversity and function of proteins. One approach for producing polypeptides having a nnAA incorporated at a defined amino acid residue is to use an nnAA, aminoacylated orthogonal CUA containing tRNA for introduction of the nnAA into the nascent polypeptide at an amber (stop) codon during protein translation. However, the incorporation of nnAA at an amber codon can be inhibited by the native bacterial termination complex, which normally recognizes the stop codon and terminates translation. Release Factor 1 (RF1) is a termination complex protein that facilitates the termination of translation by recognizing the amber codon in an mRNA sequence. RF1 recognition of the amber stop codon can promote pre-mature truncation products at the site of non-native amino acid incorporation, and thus decreased protein yield. Therefore, attenuating the activity of RF1 may increase nnAA incorporation into recombinant proteins.
It has previously been shown that nnAA incorporation can be increased by attenuating RF1 activity in 3 ways: 1) neutralizing antibody inactivation of RF1, 2) genomic knockout of RF1 (in an RF2 bolstered strain), and 3) site specific removal of RF1 using a strain engineered to express RF1 containing a protein tag for removal by affinity chromatography (Chitin Binding Domain and His Tag). The present disclosure describes a novel method for inactivating RF1 by introducing proteolytic cleavage sites into the RF1 amino acid sequence. The cleavage sites are not accessible to the protease during bacterial cell growth, but are cleaved by the protease when the bacterial cells are lysed to produce cell-free extract. Thus, the yield of full length polypeptides having a nnAA incorporated at an amber codon is increased in bacterial cell extracts expressing modified RF1 variants described herein.